Congratulations! You've found the love of your life! You've overcome nearly all the trials lovers need to overcome and you're this close to announcing your relationship to the world. You already have a wedding date planned and everything.

There's just one problem.

Your family can't pay the dowry.

A dowry (or dower) is an ancient practice, possibly predating the Code of Hammurabi. Basically, it's payment—be it in the form of livestock, goods, property, money, or any combination of the four—that the bride's family pays to the husband's family. This is usually done to ensure that the newlyweds have some "seed money" to start a household—ie, they don't start their married life broke, and in some contexts, can the the equivalent of a girl's Inheritance, what with the Heir Club for Men. It's also useful incentive for the hubby to not be abusive, as the woman has certain rights to her dowry.

The practice of calling off a marriage—be it arranged or otherwise—due to the bride's family being unable to provide for her dowry was widely practiced in Europe and Asia. This presented a problem, especially to those who were marrying their daughter off for money.

The gender-inverted, less-done version is the bridewealth, in which the husband's family pays the bride's. This variation is more about making the groom prove he's a good provider, and thereby a good husband for their daughter. Dowry and bridewealth are common in societies that favor arranged marriages. If the inheritance laws or customs are designed to keep the family wealth intact (e.g., Primogeniture), then the dowry is a substitute for the bride's claims. Among renaissance Italian families women were often considered a net loss and men a net profit because women took a dowry with them whereas men brought a dowry in.

A dower can also refer to the money, goods, or estate given to support a postulant at a convent, but that's not to be confused with this trope.

A stereotypical situation is for a Funny Foreigner (usually from Qurac) to see a woman and instantly offer any number of barnyard animals to marry her, and be completely confused at the outrage, when five camels and a goat is an incredibly generous offer. Expect this trope to turn up in period pieces.

Shows up in many of Jane Austen's works (at a time when the trope was Truth in Television), as her protagonists are often the daughters of not-particularly-wealthy gentlemen who cannot afford to give their daughters large dowries.

In the Daughter of the Empire trilogy of the Rift War Cycle, Mara of the Acoma very nearly inverts this trope. She has quite a substantial dowry, but her estate's suffered such a huge military loss that the problem is finding an adequate protector who A) isn't an enemy and B) is willing to shoulder the burden of protecting the estate without gaining control. Mara decides to Take a Third Option.

Sherlock Holmes has a situation where a lady is looking for her recently-disappeared fiance. It turns out her stepfather was abusing her poor eyesight to play the part of the fiance, so that he could both not pay the dowry and keep her income close at hand.

In Snuff, Vimes has the concept of a dowry explained to him, after running into a family of young women who worry about not finding husbands for this reason (in addition to suffering from Thinks Like a Romance Novel). He gets very angry.

The Miser. Harpagon, the titular miser, is willing to marry his daughter off to a nobleman instead of the man she wants because he has accepted to marry her without a dowry, and his son to a rich widow.

Inverted in The Taming of the Shrew where Katherine's father can't get anyone to marry her no matter how large the dowry is, since she is such a shrew. Then Petruchio comes to town and the only thing he cares about is the dowry.

St. Nicholas was said to have thrown purses filled with gold into the house of a man who could not afford the dowries for his three daughters under the cover of night so the man would not be embarrassed at having to accepting charity.

Shows up in many of Jane Austen's works (at a time when the trope was Truth In Television), as her protagonists are often the daughters of not-particularly-wealthy gentlemen who cannot afford to give their daughters large dowries.

bridewealth is the converse, and may occur alongside the dowry (dower is another term for dowry)

dowry and bridewealth are common in societies that favor arranged marriages. If the inheritance laws or customs are designed to keep the family wealth intact (e.g., Primogeniture), then the dowry is a substitute for the bride's claims.

Dower also describes to the money, goods, or estate given to support a postulant at a convent.

One of the scenes that bring home how much of a miser Harpagon is is that he is entirely willing to marry off his daughter against her will, against all sorts of arguments, only because the husband-to-be is willing to take her without a dowry.

This troper heard one story in a sermon about a plain looking Polynesian woman(in around the 1800's so) who mopped about her inability to find a husband until a rich young local merchant fell in love with her. The young man bought five cattle as brideprice to extravagantly demonstrate his feelings, and the woman was right away known as a "five cow wife".

In the Daughter of the Empire trilogy of the Rift War Cycle, Mara of the Acoma very nearly inverts this trope. She has quite a substantial dowry, but her estate's suffered such a huge military loss that the problem is finding an adequate protector who A) isn't an enemy and B) is willing to shoulder the burden of protecting the estate without gaining control. Mara decides to Take A Third Option.

There's a humorous twist to this early in the Malloreon. Garion is trying to get Mandorallan and Nerina married before something else goes wrong. One obstacle that comes up is Nerina's dowry -- Mandorallan doesn't care about it, but Nerina insists that she has to have a large one for social reasons. (Garion gets stuck with the bill.)

A stereotypical situation is for a Funny Foreigner (usually from Qurac) to see a woman and instantly offer any number of barnyard animals to marry her, and be completely confused at the outrage, when five camels and a goat is an incredibly generous offer.

Sherlock Holmes has a situation where a lady is looking for her recently-disappeared fiance. It turns out her stepfather was abusing her poor eyesight to play the part of the fiance, so that he could both not pay the dowry and keep her income close at hand.

The Miser: Harpagon, the titular miser, is willing to marry his daughter off to a nobleman instead of the man she wants because he has accepted to marry her without a dowry, and his son to a rich widow.

In The Taming Of The Shrew Katherine's father can't get anyone to marry her no matter how large the dowery is, since she is such a shrew. Then Petruchio comes to town and the only thing he cares about is the dowery.

In Snuff, Vimes has the concept of a dowry explained to him, after running into a family of young women who worry about not finding husbands for this reason (in addition to suffering from Thinks Like A Romance Novel). He gets very angry.

One minor thing for the description: drop the links in the first paragraph, they don't add anything to the description. I can see how Starcrossed Lovers fit somewhat, but Secret Relationship is wholly ancillary to this trope.

In a National Lampoon magazine "Foto Funnies" strip a vaguely Arabic man tells the reader that he has struggled to come up with the large dowery that the would-be husband's family has placed on marrying his sister [Ed note: I get the feeling I didn't word that quite right.] Then the man turns to his sister and says "what do you think? Do you love him?" The joke being that he has paid the dowery and now is asking the sister if she wants to get married.

Inverted in The Quiet Man, where argument over a dowry provides the conflict. The husband cares nothing about the dowry that his brother-in-law refuses to pay, but his wife is very upset about her husband not receiving her dowry and is mad at her husband for not demanding it (not for the sake of the money itself, but what it represents).

The "funny foreigner" gag shows up in Pratchett's Jingo, where it is meticulously lampshaded ("This is another test, isn't it ... ?") and analyzed; the foreigner knows exactly what he's doing.

"For Mrs Boggis?" Vimes waggled a hanmd dismissively. "Nah ... four camels, maybe four camels and a goat in a good light. And when she's had a shave."

In L Sprague De Camp's An Elephant for Aristotle, set in the age of Alexander The Great, the Greek hero falls for a well-born Persian woman, while the woman's brother falls for the hero's own sister. This creates many problems, given that both cultures have a bias against foreign marriages, but one is that Greeks give dowries, while Persians give bride payments. Weirdly, it takes the hero's smart brother to point out the obvious solution.

I get the Added Alliterative Appeal, but the situation described by this trope is not a dilemma. A dilemma is a situation in which you have two unpleasant or unacceptable choices. The situation described here offers you no choice at all, since you can't very well choose to pay the dowry if you simply do not have enough money to do so.

2. Alright, to clarify this, "...but one involves the fact that Greeks give dowries, while Persians give bride payments, and all parties are facing some financial limitations when the romances first arise. Fortunately, the hero's smart brother comes up with a rather obvious solution involving the payments more or less cancelling out, bolstered by a stroke of financial good luck for the hero."

The Vorkosigan Saga: Mark has the difference between pride-price and dowry explained when he offers to pay Koudelka for continuing to date his daughter.

Belisarius Series: Tahmina's dowry could have been an extortionate sum that bankrupted the Persian Empire, but instead was simply a horse and a horse-bow, in reference to a saying that a Persian should teach his son to "ride a horse, to shoot a bow and to despise all lies."

Assassins Creed 2: An inverted example. Due to her temper, Giovanni (Ezio's father) was forced to raise Claudia's dowry by 1,000 florins, since she scared off all of her suitors.

Played for Laughs in Dragon Age 2: During one of the companion quests, after many unsucessful yet hilarious methods of courting one of her guardsmen, Guard-Captain Aveline resorts to presenting herself with a dowry to the guard's mother and Hawke being the one presenting her.

^ I think that not being able to put together a dowry is a slightly different trope than a couple who can't support themselves. Especially since in many cases the husband is perfectly successful, but it's the wife's family who can't put together a dowry. They're sister tropes, not the same trope.

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